Hollywoodbets Sharks Currie Cup coach JP Pietersen believes the arrival of several World Cup-winning Springboks presents his young squad with unique challenges and opportunities ahead of Friday’s clash with Griquas in Kimberley.
The Durban side has been boosted by the availability of several seasoned internationals including Makazole Mapimpi, Andre Esterhuizen and Trevor Nyakane, who are in need of game time ahead of the Boks’ clash with Portugal in Bloemfontein next week.
While there were some lingering questions around how the immediate selection of these individuals would affect the team’s chemistry, Pietersen quickly put them to bed.
“Andre’s been here before. I chatted to him about the moves, and he says it’s all the same still. Andre understands, most of the boys play with him, so obviously the new guy in the group will be Trevor. Luckily, he’s not making a lot of decision-making, he’s not playing at No 10, so his main job is to give us some good go-forward at scrum.
“[In terms of] team cohesion, I think the group is quite tight with the experience and leaders that we have. They do understand that it’s not a province thing, but that the country actually needs the [Bok] players to play well next week.”
In fact, Pietersen believes the presence of the World Cup winners will only add to his youngsters’ rugby education, as they rub shoulders with such accomplished players so early in their careers.
“How I do look at it is, like [Nick] Hatton and the young boys in the group, they’ve got the time now to have experience with Springbok World Cup winners. To learn from them and to have a chat. That’s something they can benefit from. I look at it as a positive, you can learn so much from guys’ experience.
“I see lots of opportunity for my group, for the young guys to grow and learn as quickly as possible.”
Coming off the back of a nail-biting one-point defeat to the Lions in the first round in Durban, the former Bok winger believes the nature of Friday’s Griquas encounter will bring its own obstacles.
“The loss against the Lions hurt us. We felt like we could have won the game. Did we take a lot of confidence out of the game? Yes.
“They [Griquas] have been successful at home. They are a very confident team, the challenge for us is, are we going to let the Boks win us the game, or is the rest of the group going to do the things we did last week and have the Boks follow what the rest of the group has been doing?”
